Amid the deluge of gray falling on eye palettes this spring, Dolce & Gabbana stands out. In the pan, their Smooth Eye Colour Quad in Eden ($59) looks like a garden with pretty pastels in mint green and pink.

Dolce & Gabbana usually scores with their quads — hitting them out of the park with rich pigmentation, a buttery, easy-to-blend texture, and shadows that exhibit very little fallout, but I think this new one falls a little short.

As the one and only quad in the new Secret Garden Collection, Eden’s shadows are uncharacteristically uneven when applied.

I wore the colors in the palette today and kinda struggled to blend them together. They weren’t as smooth as I’m used to from the brand and looked patchier then I would’ve liked.

That said, it isn’t all bad. I kinda like how sheer they are. In fact, I can see that coming in handy for single washes of color over the lids, but it might be an issue for fans of the brand accustomed to bold eyeshadow pigments.

These colors look TOUGH to wear – I imagine folks who aren’t super pale risk all kinds of ashy action from these. That being said, I bet they’d look wicked cool as a heavy wash over the lid with a thick black cat eye line.

I’m actually pleasantly surprised by how much nicer they look on you than what I’d imagined from just seeing the pans/swatches. I’d be terrified of a highly pigmented hot pink or sea foam green, though. I know not everyone has those irrational fears.

Oh, shoot, can you believe I forgot to comment on Hall & Oates? One of my first 45 purchases as a very young gal was Kiss On My List. I just realized that 90% of the people reading this are probably like “what’s a 45?”. Gracious, I’m old.

Do you ever wonder what happened to all your old music? I still have some of my vinyl from back in the day — Madonna’s Like A Virgin, The Bangles Different Light and maybe even some Whitesnake (LOL)! I’ve got some tapes too.

Believe it or not, we still have boxes of vinyl. My parents even have some old Elvis (and 45s like Palisades Park). Of course, we haven’t had a turntable hooked up in almost 20 years, but no matter. I do still have some tapes in the boxes too – how can you really get rid of the “mixed tapes”?

Well, you haven’t steered me wrong yet, so I guess I’ll have to reconsider the sea foam green!

Honestly I’m kind of delighted that the quality of the palette isn’t A+! The price was to high for me anyway, but it still looked so absolutely beautiful, plus I’m very pale – all the colours would show up on my skin… But a product that’s not “excellent” for a price like this – naaah, thanks!

Haha, there is!! Have you ever heard of singsnap.com? Its a live streaming karaoke website. You can just sing along, or if you have a microphone and webcam, you can invite your friends into a private chatroom and sing for each other, its like a virtual karaoke party!! You can also record yourself and post it for others to hear. They have a decent free song selection but if you pay a little for a year, you get WAY more songs and options like changing the key. I’m hooked! (especially since I have my stereo and my roomie’s LCD bigscreen hooked to my laptop, so its like a karaoke studio in my apartment.

Ya know, I’ve heard and seen multiple complaints about how even high end shadows are much sheerer than most people are used to lately. And this across multiple brands. I think there is a shift right now in makeup trend to a more “washed” look. As make-up fiends we all want the most highly pigmented, bright (or deep) makeup-y looks we can find. I just think there is a trend toward more sheer pastel colors right now and I’m not sure it’s just for spring.Lisa S. recently posted … Life gets in your eyyyyyes! sung to the tune Smoke gets in your eyes

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